ordered her to return to Germany. On 22 September she departed Chinese waters and arrived back in Germany on 1 October. Later service She was decommissioned for a major reconstruction the day she returned to Germany. The work was done at the Kaiserliche Werft in Wilhelmshaven from December 1901 to 1904. New, more powerful electrical generators were installed, the upper deck was enclosed, and the 10.5 cm guns that had been located on the upper deck were moved to gun ports in the hull. The two 5 cm guns that were located abreast of the center funnel were moved further aft, to the third funnel. After completion of the work, Gefion was left out of service in reserve. Following the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, the Admiralstab ordered Gefion to be reactivated, and on 10 August Korvettenkapitän (Corvette Captain) Waldeyer was placed in command of the ship. A crew could not be assembled due to shortages in personnel, however, and so the ship could not be placed back into service. Waldeyer was therefore transferred to another ship on 21 August. Gefion was thereafter moved to Danzig in 1916 for use as a barracks ship for crews of warships being repaired at the Kaiserliche Werft there. She remained there for the duration of the war, and was stricken from the Navy Directory on 5 November 1919. She was thereafter sold to Norddeutsche Tiefbaugesellschaft, converted into a diesel-powered freighter, and renamed Adolf Sommerfeld in 1920. She had been purchased along with the old pre-dreadnought , from which some material was taken for Gefions conversion. The ship's magazines and most of her machinery spaces were converted into cargo holds. With her new diesel engines, which had come from the unfinished U-boats U-115 and U-116, she could steam at and had a cargo capacity of . The conversion was not particularly successful, and was only done due to a severe shortage of shipping in the aftermath of the war. As a result, Adolf Sommerfeld served only very briefly, and was broken up for scrap by Danziger Hoch- und Tiefbau in Danzig in 1923. Notes Footnotes Citations References Further reading Cruisers of the Imperial German Navy Ships built in Danzig 1893 ships World War I cruisers of Germany Ships built by Schichau